'This is different,' Heath Carroll says

Carroll-Lewellen Funeral and Cremation Services is seen in Longmont on Dec. 28, 2016. The funeral home is being sold to the Houston-based Carriage Services. (Matthew Jonas / Staff Photographer)

A Longmont funeral home whose director once criticized a competitor's sale to a corporation has itself been sold to a corporate entity. Carroll-Lewellen Funeral and Cremation Services has been acquired by Houston-based Carriage Services for an undisclosed amount.

Owner Heath Carroll, who was critical when Greeley's Allnutt Funeral Services sold to SCI in August, said he only considered a partnership with Carriage because "they believe in decentralizing and letting the local managing partner make the decisions at the local level.

"This is a totally different company than SCI," said Carroll, who worked for SCI as a director before purchasing what was then Lewellen Funeral Services in 2007.

The publicly traded SCI, also of Houston, is the largest funeral and deathcare company in the world, holding 12 percent of all funeral homes in the U.S., according to the National Funeral Directors Association (NFDA). The company owns 1,509 funeral homes and 476 cemeteries across the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico and earned more than $3 billion in revenue in 2016, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Longmont's Howe Mortuary, which was purchased by Allnutt in July 2016, is an SCI-owned entity, though Geoff Howe, a third-generation owner, stayed on as funeral director. Boulder's Mountain View Memorial Park and Crist Mortuary are also under SCI's umbrella.

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Carriage, also a public company, operates 174 funeral homes and 32 cemeteries in the U.S., about a 1 percent share of the market, according to NFDA. It reported revenues of $248.2 million in 2016. It made its entrance into the Colorado market with this and another purchase, of Viegut Funeral Home in Loveland.

"That corridor from Denver to Fort Collins is a really growing area, (and) the fact of the matter is that when population grows, the amount of people that pass away does, too," said Jake Johnson, acquisitions analyst for Carriage. "We seek out good markets (and) businesses that can grow through good leadership."

The vast majority of funeral homes, 86 percent, are still privately owned, but consolidation has been increasing in recent years as private owners age. Corporate-owned funeral homes, SCI in particular, have been criticized as being more expensive than privately owned entities, a criticism Carroll levied at Allnutt after its acquisition.

Owner Rick Allnutt declined comment other than to say prices had not gone up at any of the homes his family operates. Carroll, too, insisted his facility would retain competitive pricing.

"Our family services and lower prices will continue," he said. "Nothing changes to our client families."

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